[1] _History of European Thought in the 19th Century._
[2] _Political Thought in England from Bacon to Halifax_, Home University Library, p. 49.
[3] Essay on “The Nature of Democracy” in _Popular Government_, London 1885.
[4] _Psychology, the Study of Behaviour_, Home University Library, London, 1912.
[5] _Community_, by R. M. Maciver, London, 1917.
[6] _In Body and Mind_, London, 1911.
[7] _Op. cit._ p. 76.
[8] _Op. cit._ p. 77.
[9] _Op. cit._ p. 90.
[10] E. Barker, _Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the present day_, Home University Library, London, 1915.
[11] _Op. cit._ p. 11.
[12] _Op. cit._ pp. 62-64.
[13] _Op. cit._ p. 74. I consider Mr Barker’s brief statement of the nature of the group mind entirely acceptable, and it has given me great pleasure to find myself in such close harmony with it. It will perhaps give further weight to the fact of our agreement, if I add that the whole of this book, including the rest of this introductory chapter, was written before I took up Mr Barker’s brilliant little volume.
[14] _Op. cit._ p. 175.
[15] This principle of primitive sympathy or simple direct induction or contagion of emotion was formulated in Chapter IV of my _Social Psychology_.
[16] It was my good fortune to witness the almost instantaneous spread of anger through a crowd of five thousand warlike savages in the heart of Borneo. Representatives of all the tribes of a large district of Sarawak had been brought together by the resident magistrate for the purpose of strengthening friendly relations and cementing peace between the various tribes. All went smoothly, and the chiefs surrounded by their followers were gathered together in a large hall, rudely constructed of timber, to make public protestations of friendship. An air of peace and good-will pervaded the assembly, until a small piece of wood fell from the roof upon the head of one of the leading chiefs, making a slight wound from which the blood trickled. Only the immediate neighbours of this chief observed the accident or could perceive its effect; nevertheless in the space of a few seconds a wave of angry emotion swept over the whole assembly, and a general and bloody fight would have at once commenced, but that the Resident had insisted upon all weapons being left in the boats on the river 200 yards away. The great majority of the crowd rushed headlong to fetch their weapons from their boats, while the few who remained on the ground danced in fury or rushed to and fro gesticulating wildly. Happily the boats were widely scattered along the banks of the river, so that it was possible for the Resident, by means of persuasion, threats, and a show of armed force, to prevent the hostile parties coming together again with their weapons in hand.
[17] _The Souls of Black Folk_, by W. E. B. Du Bois, London, 1905.
[18] _The Crowd_, p. 11.
[19] In a recent work (_What is Instinct?_ by Bingham Newland) the author, who shows an intimate knowledge of the life of wild animals, seems to postulate some such direct telepathic _rapport_ between animals of the same species.
[20] See _The Dissociation of a Personality_, by Dr Morton Prince; _Double Personality_, by A. Binet; _The Psychology of Suggestion_, by Boris Sidis; _L’automatism psychologique_, by Pierre Janet; and the descriptions and discussions of William James in his _Principles of Psychology_.
[21] _Philosophy of the Unconscious._
[22] _Die Psychophysik._
[23] _Psychologie des idées forces._
[24] _Les Sociétés animales_, Paris, 1877.
[25] _Bau und Leben des Socialen Körpers._
[26] _Medicinische Psychologie._
[27] I have argued that the great increase of knowledge of the functions and structure of the nervous system attained by recent research does but provide for the argument a surer basis of empirical data; and I have contended that some at least of the cases of disintegration of personality are more easily reconcilable with this view, than with the contrary doctrine which regards the individual consciousness as the collective consciousness of the brain-cells. See my _Body and Mind_, a book I found myself compelled to write in order to arrive at a reasoned judgment on this difficult problem, which obtrudes itself at the outset of the study of group life.
[28] _Social Psychology_, Chapter IX.
[29] See especially A. Stoll’s _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie_, where the events of the French revolution have been treated in some detail from this point of view.
[30] Hon. Maurice Baring in an article in the _Morning Post_ of April 21, 1906.
[31] _Social Psychology_, Chapter IX.
[32] _Op. cit._ Chapter VII.
[33] One great difference between the professional army, such as that of England, and the citizen armies of Europe, consists in the fact that the special sentiment for the army is stronger in the former; the more general patriotic sentiment, in the rank and file of the latter; though in the regular officers of the continental army the sentiment for the army itself is no doubt usually the stronger.
[34] Cp. _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, by Ch. Hose and W. McDougall, London, 1912.
[35] _From Religion to Philosophy_, p. 77.
[36] _Op. cit._ p. 82.
[37] Cf. _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, by Ch. Hose and W. McDougall, London, 1912.
[38] Mr Cornford’s book might in fact be entitled with greater propriety _From Philosophy to Religion_.
[39] 1 Oct. 1914.
[40] _Les Fonctions mentales dans les Sociétés inférieures_, Alcan, Paris, 1910.
[41] At this point I would refer the reader to the discussion of the self-regarding sentiment (Chapter VII) in my _Social Psychology_.
[42] For a brief history of the nation-state the reader may be referred to Prof. Ramsay Muir’s _Nationalism and Internationalism_, London, 1917. He rightly describes ‘nationalism’ as one of the most powerful factors in modern history. It is, I think, obviously true that we may go further and say that it is _the_ most powerful factor in modern history.
[43] _Op. cit._ p. 38.
[44] _Op. cit._ p. 54.
[45] _Op. cit._ p. 51.
[46] Chapter II. On the question of the definition of the terms ‘mind’ and ‘character’ I would refer the reader to my _Psychology, The Study of Behaviour_, Home University Library.
[47] Prof. Hans Driesch’s conception of ‘super-individual entelechy’ seems to be of this order, arrived at by the same line of reasoning. See _Science and Philosophy of the Organism_, Gifford Lectures, 1907.
[48] _Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples._
[49] As examples of the best work as yet accomplished in this immense and fascinating field, I would refer the reader to the books of M. Alfred Fouillée one of the most clear-sighted, judicious, and readable of modern philosophers, especially his _Psychologie des peuples européens_, his _Psychologie du peuple français_, and his _Science Sociale Contemporaine_.
[50] _Psychologie du peuple français_, p. 4. Paris 1903.
[51] _Social Psychology_, p. 330.
[52] _Les inégalités des races humaines._
[53] This fantastic doctrine has found its fullest expression in Chamberlain’s work _The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century_.
[54] Other prominent exponents of this view are Mr J. M. Robertson in his book _The Germans_ and in his _Introduction to English Politics_, and M. J. Finot in his _Race Prejudice_.
[55] I here use this word in the large, loose and convenient sense in which it is used by M. Tarde in his _Lois de l’imitation_. I have examined the nature of imitative processes more closely in my _Social Psychology_.
[56] Meredith Townsend regards this as one of the leading qualities of the peoples of India. See _Europe and Asia, London, 1901_.
[57] Cp. Ripley’s _Races of Europe_ and Prof. H. J. Fleure’s _Human Geography in Western Europe_, London, 1919.
[58] Cf. _The Black Republic_, by Sir Spencer St John and _Where Black rules White_, by H. Hesketh Prichard.
[59] M. le Bon and more than one Indian civil servant in conversation.
[60] By G. Lowes Dickinson, _Hibbert Journal_, Jan. 1911.
[61] In the _Fortnightly Review_, Jan. 1910, and in his _Social Environment and Moral Progress_, London, 1913.
[62] _Physics and Politics._
[63] Cp. Ripley, _op. cit._ and Fleure, _op. cit._
[64] This was written in 1910, and now in 1919 the dissolution which was so obviously impending is an accomplished fact.
[65] The great myth of the racial unity and superiority of the German people, which we have noticed above, has been cultivated and propagated, with elaborate disregard for fact by the German State and its henchmen in the universities and elsewhere, in a deliberate effort to remedy by art the lack of natural boundaries and of true national homogeneity.
[66] In his _Works of Man_ Mr March Philips shews clearly the influence of the Egyptian landscape upon the arts of sculpture and architecture.
[67] Cf. Sir S. Dill’s _The Roman Empire from Nero to Augustus_, London, 1905.
[68] Since these lines were written a new mode of rapid locomotion, namely the aerial, which has resulted from the invention and rapid development of the internal combustion engine, threatens to eclipse all others in its effects upon the organisation of the world.
[69] This state of affairs has no doubt been considerably altered during the great war; the political education of Germany, a painful but salutary process, is progressing rapidly.
[70] Cf. N. Angell, _The Great Illusion_.
[71] Incipient nations have appeared where the Bantu stock has produced occasionally great warrior chiefs such as Chaka and Cetewayo.
[72] _Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples._
[73] I do not propose to examine in this book the much discussed question—Are the leaders of a nation to be regarded as produced by the nation according to the general laws of biology and psychology, or as given to them by some supernatural process? This question belongs to a branch of Social Psychology which is not included in the volume.
[74] _Psychologie du peuple français_, p. 13.
[75] Ramsay Muir, _op. cit._ and J. Holland Rose, _The Development of the European Nations_. London, 1905.
[76] J. Holland Rose, _op. cit._
[77] I suggest that international emulation in this sphere may prove to be an effective, probably the only effective, substitute for war.
[78] _Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers._
[79] _Decadence._
[80] Cf. A. Smith’s _Village Life in China_. The author insists on the lack of public spirit, of the idea of action _pro bono publico_.
[81] 1906.
[82] In his _Theory of the State_.
[83] By Schaffle, _op. cit._, and all the school of German ‘idealism’.
[84] The substance of this chapter was contained in a paper entitled ‘The Will of the People,’ read before the Sociological Society and published in the _Sociological Review_, 1912.
[85] _Philosophical Theory of the State_ and Article in _International Journal of Ethics_, 1907.
[86] Cf. H. Rose, _The Development of the European Nations_ and Ramsay Muir, _Nationalism and Internationalism_.
[87] _The Russo-Japanese War_, Vol. II, p. 25.
[88] _La Science Sociale contemporaine_, p. 115.
[89] _Social Psychology_, Chapters V-IX. Dr Bosanquet’s failure (as it seems to me) to achieve a satisfactory account of the social will is the inevitable consequence of the inadequacy of his conception of individual volition. This is set out in his _Psychology of the Moral Self_, where he shews himself to be an uncompromising adherent of the intellectualist tradition. He totally ignores the existence and organisation of the conative side of the mind. His notion of volition is based upon the now discredited theory of ideo-motor action.
[90] This was written before the war with Germany.
[91] Emulation in the administration of backward peoples offers perhaps the greatest possibilities as ‘a moral equivalent for war.’
[92] Cp. Principal L. P. Jacks on the Japanese in his _Alchemy of Thought_.
[93] W. L. George, _English Review_, May, 1915, “The Price of Nationality.” “Anger, indeed, is the soul of what is called the national will. To call it a will is perhaps too much, it is an instinct and mainly an instinct to hate.... Love of country is mainly hatred of other countries.”
[94] Cf. Gilbert Murray, _Collection of Addresses on The War given at Bedford College_, 1915.
[95] Incidentally he holds up my _Social Psychology_ as a dreadful example of such an attempt and a woeful evidence of the parlous state of present-day culture in England. Such dislike of any attempt to understand that which we hold sacred is intelligible enough in the vulgar, for whom all analysis is destructive of the values they unreasoningly cherish. But it may be hoped that men of letters who set out to defend patriotism will learn to rise above this attitude, just as the more enlightened leaders of religion are learning to welcome psychological inquiry in their domain.
[96] In these respects the Church alone can enter into serious rivalry as an object of loyalty.
[97] As Dean Inge has remarked—“If they love not those whom they have seen, how shall they love those whom they have not seen?”
[98] Cp. Fielding Hall, _The Soul of a People_.
[99] This, as President Lowell clearly shows in his _Public Opinion and Popular Government_, is carried to an extreme in America and lies at the root of many administrative evils.
[100] President Lowell (_op. cit._) has clearly shown other benefits resulting from the party system; he shows especially how the party is needed to prepare a program and select candidates, if the popular vote is to give expression to the dominant opinion of the people.
[101] Cp. his _Civilisation and Progress_.
[102] On the nature and development of the moral sentiments in the individual mind, see my _Social Psychology_, Chapter VIII.
[103] _Op. cit._ p. 210.
[104] In this connexion I would refer the reader to _The New State_ by M. P. Follett (London, 1918), an interesting book in which the true nature and function of collective deliberation is forcibly expounded.
[105] Cf. W. R. Patterson, _The Nemesis of Nations_, London, 1906.
[106] _Social Evolution_, _Principle of Western Civilisation_, and _The Science of Power_.
[107] _Essai d’une Psychologie politique du Peuple Anglais_, Paris, 1903.
[108] _Op. cit._ p. 20.
[109] _History of Civilisation_, p. 137.
[110] In this connexion it must be remembered that in Hindu society the man of proved and acknowledged holiness is permitted and encouraged to procreate a large number of children.
[111] _Europe and Asia._
[112] _Op. cit._
[113] Guizot asserted that, even when new ideas and institutions have originated elsewhere, it has usually been only by their adoption in France that they have been spread through Europe (_A History of Civilization in Europe_).
[114] I cite these passages after M. Boutmy, _op. cit._ p. 168.
[115] The most frank, perhaps somewhat exaggerated, expression of the difference is _The Superiority of the Anglo-Saxon_, by Ed. Demolins.
[116] _History of Civilisation in England_, Vol. II, p. 114.
[117] _Comment la route crée le type social_, Paris, Didot et Cie.
[118] _Histoire de la Formation particulariste_, Paris.
[119] The reality of selective effect of migration is shown by the stature of American immigrants; those from Scotland are said to be two inches taller than the average Scotchman; and De Lapouge shows (_Les Sélections Sociales_, Paris, 1896, p. 367) that a superiority of stature almost as marked, may be inferred for the French and German immigrants of America from the statistics of the armies of the Civil War.
[120] A. Reibmayer (_Inzucht u. Vermischung beim Menschen_, Leipzig, 1897) insists upon the importance of isolation and consequent inbreeding for the formation of superior strains and subraces. He points out that the geographical barriers of Europe have favoured in this way the production of distinctive national types. Like Stewart Chamberlain, Flinders Petrie, and others, he regards the dark ages of Europe as a period of chaos directly due to the overcoming of these geographical barriers and the consequent prevalence of crossbreeding on a large scale.
[121] _White Capital and coloured Labour._
[122] Aristotle says “want of men was the ruin of Sparta.” Fathers of three sons were exempted from military service, and of four sons from all State burdens.
[123] Several writers have pointed out the importance of these facts and at least one professional historian has insisted strongly upon them, namely O. Seeck in his _Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt_, Berlin, 1910, vol. 1.
[124] On this topic cp. Dr Archdall Reid’s _The Present Evolution of Man_ and his _Principles of Heredity_, in which books the effects of selection by disease and by alcohol are vividly set out.
[125] _Op. cit._
[126] O. Ammon, _Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre natürlichen Grundlagen_, Jena, 1900.
[127] De Lapouge, _Les Sélections Sociales_; cf. also W. Alexis, _Abhandlungen zur Theorie der Bevölkerungs-und Moralstatistik_, Jena, 1903, and W. Schallmayer’s _Vererbung und Auslese in ihrer soziologischen und politischen Bedeutung_, Jena, 1910.
[128] Ammon’s Law.
[129] Pointed out by Francis Galton and Fouillée.
[130] On the other hand it tends (partly no doubt by deliberate design) to spread itself by insisting upon the duty of procreation. This effect is said to be very considerable in French Canada and only to be partially counteracted by a very high rate of infantile mortality.
[131] _The Nineteenth Century_ for April, 1906.
[132] In _National Life and Character_, a pessimistic though intellectually stimulating book.
[133] _Provident Societies_, by Sidney Webb, and _The London Population_, by D. Heron.
[134] It must be recognised also that in Great Britain emigration has, during the last three centuries, tended in all probability in the same direction as the various forms of social selection—namely, to the deterioration of the home population; for in all ages it is the bold and enterprising persons who seek new homes in far countries, leaving the weakly, the timid, the dull, and the defective behind in the mother country. Even the convicts that we exported at one time to our colonies were probably persons of more than average capacity, though some of them may have been innately defective in moral disposition.
[135] _Études sur la sélection chez l’homme._ Paris, 1904.
[136] _England and the English._
[137] Notably by Prof. Flinders Petrie in his _Revolutions of Civilisation_.
[138] _Op. cit._ p. 407.
[139] De Laponge does not stand alone in this opinion. Many biologists and leaders of thought have expressed it hardly less strongly, though not all of them have attached so much importance to the influence of the towns. It has been expressed in general terms by Dr and Mrs Whetham (in the _Hibbert Journal_ for Oct. 1911), by Dean Inge in a number of forcible articles, by Mr W. Bateson in his ‘Herbert Spencer Lecture’ for 1912, and by other writers in a number of articles in the _Eugenics Review_ and other journals.
[140] This conclusion may perhaps be said to be now generally accepted by those who have given any thought to the matter. A. R. Wallace argued strongly in this sense; the late Benjamin Kidd set out the evidence impressively in his _Social Evolution_, Chapter IX; and it is implied by all the many writers who, as we have noted, agree in regarding the processes of selection in the civilised nations as in the main reversed or detrimental.
[141] I refer the reader to my _Social Psychology_.
[142] In this connection I may again refer to _The Pagan Tribes of Borneo_, by C. Hose and W. McDougall.
[143] It has been translated into nine languages and was reprinted ten times in the first year after its publication.
[144] Shortly before his death Mr Kidd published (in the year 1918) his _Science of Power_. In this book he showed a complete change of face on the question of the importance of innate qualities. He denied all importance to changes of innate qualities, whether for better or worse, because, as he maintained, “the social heredity transmitted through social culture is infinitely more important to a people than any heredity inborn in the individuals thereof” (p. 273); and he made in this book a violent and scornful attack upon the late Francis Galton and upon all who follow him in believing that the decay or improvement of the racial qualities of a people are of importance for its prosperity and development, and who, therefore, approve of Galton’s effort to found a science of Eugenics. Kidd did not anywhere in his last book acknowledge that he had made this very great change of principle, which completely undermines the whole argument of his _Social Evolution_, but complacently suggested that, as Newton and Darwin are regarded as the fathers of modern physical and biological science respectively, so in the future Kidd will be regarded as having founded anew in his _Social Evolution_ the science of society. On reading the _Science of Power_ after having written this chapter, I was amazed at this assumption on behalf of a book whose most fundamental doctrine the author had himself renounced, and I turned again to the earlier work to verify my brief summary of its argument. I confess that it is not easy to make sure of what the author was driving at. But I find that Kidd, in discussing the influence of religious systems, wrote (on p. 307) “Natural selection seems, in short, to be steadily evolving in the race that type of character upon which these forces act most readily and efficiently; that is to say, it is evolving religious character in the first instance, and intellectual character only as a secondary product in association with it.” On the following page I find—“The race would, in fact, appear to be growing more and more religious,” and “a preponderating element in the type of character which the evolutionary forces at work in human society are slowly developing, would appear to be the sense of reverence.” And there are many other passages which, in spite of the habitual lack of precision of Kidd’s language, can only be interpreted to mean that the improvement of moral or religious character, on which he so strongly insists as a feature of recent centuries, involves and depends upon improvement of innate qualities in the mass of the people.
[145] Otto Seeck (_op. cit._ vol. 1. p. 270) writes—“The equipment of the legionaries remained unchanged from Augustus to Diocletian: no improvements of tactics, no new munitions of war were brought into use during more than three hundred years. The Roman saw his enemies becoming ever more terrible, his own army ever less efficient; for now this, now that, Province was laid waste and all were threatened. It was, therefore, to the most urgent interest of every citizen that this state of affairs should be remedied; the most cultured circles were familiar with the needs of the army, for all the higher officers came from the class of Senators and nobles. Nevertheless, there appeared not a single invention, which might have assured to the Roman soldiers their erstwhile superiority! Books indeed were written upon tactics, strategy and fortification, but their authors almost without exception were content to expound in a formal manner what their more capable forefathers had taught; in this literature the expression of any new idea was carefully avoided.... As in the military sphere, so also was it in all others. Neither in agriculture, nor in handicrafts, nor in the practice of statecraft, did a new idea of any importance appear since the first century after Christ. Literature and art also moved only in sterile imitation, which became always more poverty-stricken and technically feebler.”
[146] Cf. _La Cité Antique_ of F. de Coulanges.
[147] A fact which provides another argument against use-inheritance.
[148] This was written before the Great War but needs, I think, no modification.
[149] Francis Galton and his disciples have produced much evidence to show that the educated class of Englishmen includes a very much larger proportion of strains of high ability than the rest of the people, it having been formed by the long continued operation of the social ladder. There is no reason to doubt the truth of this conclusion.
[150] Prof. S. Alexander, in his _Moral Order and Progress_, was perhaps the first to draw attention to this form of the struggle for existence.
[151] This last sentence perhaps is only partially true. A rigid system of State Socialism would involve a retrogression in this respect.
[152] As the Spaniards well-nigh exterminated in the name of the Church the civilisation and the nations of Mexico and Peru.
[153] _Introduction to Social Psychology_.
[154] _Heredity and Selection in Sociology_, London, 1907; an interesting work similar in tendency to Kidd’s _Social Evolution_.
